page_title: Ryūkōka
section_title: 1937–1945: Influences of war
hierarchical_section_title: Ryūkōka / History / 1937–1945: Influences of war
caption_attribution_description: 日本語: 1930年代に宣伝用として使用されたスチールをスキャナでスキャン
context_page_description: Ryūkōka is a Japanese musical genre. The term originally denoted any kind of "popular music" in Japanese. Therefore, imayō, which was promoted by Emperor Go-Shirakawa in the Heian period, was a kind of ryūkōka. Today, however, ryūkōka refers specifically to Japanese popular music from the late 1920s through the early 1960s. Some of the roots of ryūkōka were developed from Western classical music. Ryūkōka ultimately split into two genres: enka and poppusu. Unlike enka, archetypal ryūkōka songs did not use the kobushi method of singing. Ryūkōka used legato. Bin Uehara and Yoshio Tabata are considered to be among the founders of the modern style of kobushi singing.
  Many composers and singers of ryūkōka went on to earn official distinctions; Ichiro Fujiyama and composers Masao Koga and Ryoichi Hattori received the People's Honour Award in later years.
  Although enka branched off from ryūkōka, many singers of the latter genre proclaimed strong disdain for its stylistic descendant. In a 1981 interview, Noriko Awaya said "Whenever I hear enka, I have to get away from the music because I feel like vomiting."
context_section_description: In 1936, NHK started radio program "Kokumin Kayō" (国民歌謡 lit. "National Kayō") to compete with ryūkōka, which was under the influence of "Ero Guro Nansensu", but it soon began to air war songs around July 1937. The program was renamed to "Warera no Uta" (われらのうた lit. "Our Songs") in 1941 and then "Kokumin Gasshō" (国民合唱 lit. "National Group Singing") in 1942. The songs during the war were called "Senji Kayō" (戦時歌謡). During the war, many musicians were forced to write war songs. Yuji Koseki composed many war songs and was later criticised as a war collaborator, though he seemed to be touched with remorse. Koseki composed "Roei no Uta" (露営の歌 lit. "Song of the Camp") released in 1937. Although the song was a B-side song, it sold 600,000 copies. The 1937 song "Aikoku Kōshinkyoku" (愛国行進曲 lit. "Patriotic March") sold 1,000,000 copies. However, Japanese jazz musicians such as Ryoichi Hattori seemed to be vigorless to compose war songs. His son Katsuhisa Hattori claimed that he was not an antinationalist and he technically were hardly not able to compose war songs even if they wanted to make those because Japanese war songs were musically enka.
  On the other hand, former enka-shi Haruo Oka's debut song "Kokkyō no Haru" (国境の春 lit. "Spring at the Border") was released in 1939. Yoshio Tabata also mede his debut with song "Shima no Funauta" (島の舟唄 lit. "Island Ship Song") in 1939. Rōkyoku (naniwa-bushi) was used for enhancing the national prestige.
  Although many war songs were made after the beginning of the Pacific War, "Kōgen no Tsuki" (高原の月 lit. "Tableland Moon"), sung by Noboru Kirishima and Akiko Futaba, became popular as a lyrical song. When the war was nearing an end, the theme included frightful spectacles such as the Battle of Attu, Guadalcanal Campaign and Marshall Islands Campaign. Oka went to Ambon Island, but fell ill and soon returned to Japan. Bin Uehara, who used kobushi of naniwa-bushi for singing, was killed in the New Guinea campaign and Fujiyama was taken prisoner in Indonesia.
  After the war, the songs during the war have been regarded as a taboo even in Japan despite those historical importance. One of war songs, "Shussei Heishi o Okuru Uta" (出征兵士を送る歌 literally "Song for giving warriors a send-off"), composed by Isao Hayashi, went on to become a theme of Japanese right-wing groups called uyoku dantai. Li Xianglan's "Suzhou Nocturne", composed by Hattori, has remained controversial in China, though it was a non-propaganda song. After the war, Taro Shoji, who heard the Gyokuon-hōsō in Nagano Prefecture, was once banned from singing many of his songs because those were regarded as nationalistic. Rōkyoku faded into the wallpaper with the spread of television in the postwar period. In 1946, NHK revived their music program as "Radio Kayō" and it was later reformed as "Minna no Uta", but NHK was disinclined to mention its former history.
caption: Isao Hayashi, the composer for military song "Shussei Heishi o Okuru Uta"
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